The REAL hard part of fighting
*Disclaimer: This blog is information for if you want to fight. If you’re just doing Muay Thai for fun, fitness, to make friends, or to be able to beat up your lousy good-for-nothing neighbor, that’s great, and you can continue doing what you’re doing–not doing everything this blog says to do.
What do you think the hardest part of fighting is? The workouts? Taking hard punches, kicks, elbows, and knees to the head, body, and legs? The anxiety of wearing short shorts in front of a crowd while someone is trying to take your head off? Depending on your personality, it could be one of those things, but, from personal experience and from coaching many others, I found it isn’t any of those things. I’d even argue those are some of the easier parts as you know you signed up for that part. This blog is going to be my best attempt to tell you about the hard parts you don’t think too much—or at all—about.
A simple answer to “what is the hardest part of fighting” is consistency. You can probably start to predict some of the points this blog will make, but I’m planning on diving deeper. I want to be sure that if you say you want to fight you really know what that means. As much as I want more students to fight, I don’t think most are willing to do what it takes to actually be a fighter.
The first thing to focus on is how often are you training? This is where you need to be really honest with yourself, but it can also be tricky. Overtraining is a thing, but it is moreso caused by doing too much too quickly. If you increase your workload slowly, you should be able to build up to some of the things mentioned later in this post. However, if you try to jump into everything at once, you’re going to break and end up doing even less than you could have.
In terms of training, technical training should always be the focal point. Ask yourself how often you are actually showing up to the gym to work with your coach and partners? The foundation should be three days a week for at least two hours and then build up from there, especially as you get closer to a fight. I promise you, three days a week is on the very light side. Remember this: When you fight, you’re fighting against someone else who is training, not some nobody off the street. How often do you think they are training their technique? I bet you it’s more than three days a week.
Now not all of this training needs to be at 100%. A lot of people struggle with this. There should be serious time put into doing things at half speed to really master your form, balance, and understanding. This can also help with the physical toll of training. I point this out as this is one of those hard parts that isn’t thought about. We all get hyped up and excited to smash some pads. But how much time are you spending shadowboxing? You have to be able to make yourself do the boring stuff and do it on a consistent basis. How many times have you stood in front of the heavy bag just to practice throwing 200 roundhouses (or long knee, or teep, etc) focusing on your technique for every single rep? Doesn’t count if you zone out. It’s hard to do these things, and it doesn’t get talked about enough.
Speaking of being consistent with your training schedule, are you actually prioritizing it? It’s hard to make time to train almost every single day, but it’s crucial. Family, work, friends, etc. all want time from you. So you have to make life’s obstacles understand your goals. That may require changing a work schedule or even changing jobs (I know that sounds crazy but let’s be honest, fighting is crazy). You need to ensure your family supports your goals otherwise you are bound to fail. This is usually easy at first, but the toll of putting family second at times for the sake of fighting can start to put a strain on things. The real reason this is difficult is because when we do have time for family/friends/etc., we’re tired and don’t do the things we should for them. It’s hard. But this is what you sign up for when you say you want to fight. When you have the time between responsibilities, take your significant other out for a date, call your parents for a chat, take your kid to the park. You’re already making sacrifices for yourself, and now you have to sacrifice for them. I know it’s hard. Again, this whole blog is about how hard this whole thing really is.
You also need to find time for strength and conditioning training. Luckily there are a lot of programs for this that can be somewhat short time wise. But you still have to find that time and do that work.
Doing all of this training day in and day out becomes taxing. Most people I know can handle the physical strain. It’s the mental strain that people struggle with. It’s waking up early every day when they want to sleep in (waking up early isn’t necessarily a requirement, but most people need to, to make more time in their day). It’s dragging their butt to the gym on a Friday night when all of their friends are going out. There’s always that thought, “it’s just one session I can skip it.” The truth is you probably could skip just one. But that mindset keeps popping up over and over so you end up skipping a dozen. We constantly have to ask ourselves the question, “Are we consistently doing the work or are we consistently finding the reason for a rest day or cheat meal?”
All of that is just the training aspect, but there is more to being a fighter than training consistently. You have to eat healthy consistently. For a lot of people, myself included, that is an even bigger challenge.
The sad reality is this is a sport of weight classes meaning you want to have a low body fat percentage. I hate talking about this a lot as it can lead to all sorts of disordered eating, body dysmorphia, etc. The key is to eat nutrient dense foods 80%-90% of the time when you don’t have a fight booked and as close to 100% of the time as possible when a fight is booked.
I can’t tell you how hard it is to be that consistent. It usually requires more of your time to cook your own food. I highly recommend meal prepping as it’s better to spend a few hours one day making your food than one hour everyday making your food. Talk to Meg if you’re interested in learning more about meal prepping, as she’s been meal prepping lunches and dinners for the both of us for years now and has it down to a science.
You also learn just how easy and available bad food is when you can’t eat it. It’s everywhere, and we don’t help at The Clinic with our free candy on the desk (but that isn’t for fighters in fight camp). Pizza parties, birthday cakes, doughnuts at the morning meeting, etc. are always around the corner to sabotage you. And even when you’re killing it, friends and family will frequently question your diet.
We all hear the phrases, “the only easy day is yesterday,” “embrace the grind,” “rent is due everyday,” and so on. It’s easy to say them. It isn’t so easy to live them. Somehow, with everything you’re doing, you’ll still have quiet moments where your mind will tell you to take a day off (there are rest days but even on rest days you need to eat clean, stretch, and move your body, you don’t get to lie on the couch all day), sleep in, skip a workout, have a beer or three, etc. It gets incredibly difficult. It’s imperative you have a strong support system and cool people at your gym to help you through it all.
Life is not consistent, but if you want to fight, you need to be. There will be weddings, deaths, job crises, and more that you will have to deal with while also staying consistent with your training and diet. There will be friends and family who question why you are training so much or why you won’t have a few drinks with them. There will be stress left and right, and you have to be consistent. You are human but you have to do your absolute best to be a machine. It’s easy to buy into the mindset that you can just take one class off, one meal off, one hour off. It’s hard to be consistent. But the person standing across from you in the ring was. They trained every chance they had, they didn’t cheat their diet, they did their strength and conditioning. I hope you embraced doing the REAL hard work.
